Three Years In
by Aromene
Summary: Of all the things he had done in his life, coming to Atlantis was not only the coolest, but the most important.


Disclaimer: Not mine. Not even on any scale of probability in any parallel universe.

Summary: Of all the things he had done in his life, coming to Atlantis was not only the coolest, but the most important.

Author's Note: You know, marathon watching of Season 3, coupled with about 20 hours worth of fanfic reading, coupled with a major term paper that is due in a week, is probably a disaster waiting to happened. I should never have watched the series premiere that second time. I'm not really sure why this is about John. I so would have pegged my first Atlantis fic to be about Rodney or Elizabeth. But clearly my muse is not listening to me.

* * *

It had always come naturally to John. Rodney used to rail on and on about it for the first few months, how unfair it was that a mere _pilot_ could be so good at operating technology that Rodney had spent the better part of a year trying to figure out himself.

John wasn't entirely sure if 'fair' was the right word, but given the choice, he figured that things might have been better if he'd never been born with the gene in the first place. It might have saved a lot of lives.

It was well into the eighth month when John slipped up and said something similar to Elizabeth. She had stared at him a moment, as if she couldn't quite believe he could think something so foolish. And then she had pointed out in that matter-of-fact way of hers, that if he hadn't had the gene a lot more people would have died. And he would never have come to Atlantis in the first place.

That thought had brought John up short, because of all the things he had done in his life, coming to Atlantis was not only the coolest, but the most important. Here, he felt like he was making a difference. And here, he was accepted for who he was, and not what his past record said.

It felt like home.

And that was a new thing for John Sheppard. Family had been mostly lacking in his life, which was one of the main reasons he had joined the military in the first place. He had found camaraderie among his fellow soldiers and pilots, but he hadn't found the family he had been searching for. Until he'd stepped through the Stargate with no way to get back.

Yeah, McKay annoyed him six days out of seven, and he hadn't really had the friendship with Ford that he thought he would at the beginning, but Elizabeth had become a trusted friend somewhere along the way, and on his off days Carson was more than happy to play a game of chess or five. And somewhere along the way, John had started to think of them as the family he had never had. The rather dysfunctional family he had never had, but he wasn't about to complain.

He would have died to save any of them from day one; his was military and it was part of the calling, but by the end of the first year he had realized that he would willingly die to save any of them and it would no longer feel like a duty. Friends sacrificed for friends all the time. John had never really understood what that was like.

But he looked around him now and he couldn't imagine things without any of them. Ford's loss had been a hard blow; and it had taken him a few weeks to simply accept the fact that part of the family was missing, and that it wasn't likely going to be the last time it happened. He had accepted that, and he had vowed to fight harder the next time so that it wouldn't happen again. Not if he had any say in the matter.

Ronon he got along better with. John couldn't quite put his finger on it, except that Ronon seemed to have the same idea about the whole thing as John did. It was a friendship born of understanding; the understanding of the position they were both now in, but more than that, the understanding that both of them would die to protect the others. And do so willingly. John had learned that about Ronon the hard way, but it had been a good lesson; one he wasn't about to forget. It also made things easier, somehow, because he knew without a doubt that he could depend on Ronon. He wondered how he'd made it through the first year without that kind of trust.

And now, going on three years into this project that he hadn't known anything about when he signed on, he was thankful for it. More thankful than he'd ever been for anything in his life. He'd found where he belonged; he'd found a home and a family; and sometimes, when he woke in the predawn and looked out over the city on the edge of nowhere that had become so important to him, he realized he was happy.

He figured he'd earned it.


End file.
